What is going on in Romania?

It may sound like a dramatic question, but one has to ask it: what is going on in Romania? For me it looks as if someone has taken the 1950's history book off the shelf, to see how the Romanian communists took power then, and is determined to do it again, 70 years later. For over four years now, someone has been stubbornly implementing a new political, administrative and judicial matrix that will ultimately create a new kind of nomenklatura, an old-new political realm in which a few individuals enjoy economic and legal protection as long as they blindly obey the Party leader.

It may sound like a dramatic question, but one has to ask it: what is going on in Romania? For me it looks as if someone has taken the 1950’s history book off the shelf, to see how the Romanian communists took power then, and is determined to do it again, 70 years later. For over four years now, someone has been stubbornly implementing a new political, administrative and judicial matrix that will ultimately create a new kind of nomenklatura, an old-new political realm in which a few individuals enjoy economic and legal protection as long as they blindly obey the Party leader. For those young enough, “nomenklatura” refers to the communist elite, the top party leaders and their local representatives that enjoy special privileges due to their position within the party. “Nomenklatura” is the social class that is literally listed in the “nomenklator”. In ancient Rome, “nomenclator” referred to a slave whose duty was to recall the names of persons his master met during a political campaign, but later refed to a list of people worthy to be remembered. In the Soviet era, the “nomenklator” was the very list of the people – name and surname – belonging to the party elite and the special benefits they were entitled to according to the position within the party apparatus.There is this frenzy of “special pensions”, “special bonuses” and “special penal circumstances” that apply to a certain category of people, who are literally meant to transform the “civil servant” into the “civil master”. Paid from the state’s coffers, reluctant to change and suspicious to any attempt to remove red tape, the “special civil master” will do whatever it takes to defend the newly acquired status and benefits. From the very top of the Parliament, to each job in every ministry and to the very bottom of the remotest town hall in the country there is an army of bureaucrats whose hungry loyalty has to be fed at any cost. What did the communists all over Eastern Europe do in the ‘50s? Precisely this. Then there is this frenzy to populate the state companies’ boards with party apparatchiks, whether or not they have minimal qualifications and expertise in the area. The lesser the better, one may add. From Tarom to Nuclearelectrica, and from Transgaz to Oil Terminal, the boards have been stuffed with people whose only valuable qualification is the recommendation from the Party. What did the communists all over Eastern Europe do in the ‘50s? Precisely this. Grab a history book on the early ‘50s in Romania and you will be surprised how many important jobs in the newly nationalized factories were filled by people whose formal education ended after just four primary school classes. Mutatis-mutandis, get a list of the appointees in the state companies’ boards of directors to see that today the situation is not that much different. Take the case of Economy Minister Danut Andrusca, who was not allowed to speak on economic matters in Parliament by his own party, following a request by opposition MPs, because just letting him open his mouth was deemed as a liability for the party. Then there is the frenzy of the local authorities to set up their own companies, a move that will clearly affect free and fair competition in their respective areas of activity: infrastructure maintenance, private security, building and construction and so on. Not a single blink from the otherwise extremely dynamic and vigilant Competition Council, despite the fact that ensuring free and fair competition is one of the founding principles of the European Union’s economic architecture. And the latest confrontation over the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedures Code. The special (again, it has to be “special”) parliamentary commission on the justice legislation has rewritten the very fundamentals of the moral reparations the society in general and the victims of the criminal acts in particular are entitled to. All of a sudden, we have an “a-la-carte justice”, in which the Party, and not the judges, decide what constitutes a criminal act and what is not, in which the convict still enjoys the benefit of the doubt, while the victim is left to care for oneself. What did the communists all over Eastern Europe do in the ‘50s? Precisely this. Are we going back to communism? Well, not really, precisely because communism was, at least in theory, an ideology for the poor and not just an unstoppable desire for penal impunity. Are we going to become the subjects of some kind of autocracy? Well, yes, and some may even call it kleptocracy. I will not go that far, but business-wise it takes us two decades back, when doing a deal meant talking to the right and the only person within the governing party, who will personally give the blessing for it. Or not.